Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area

We decided to take advantage of a nice looking forecast in Vantage and try Whiskey Dick “before the snakes wake up” as Nikki would say. The weather did turn out to be great, low 60’s with a light breeze for most of the day; it was a little overcast later on. Not many of the wildflowers this hike is known for are out yet but there are some purple and yellow flowers starting to poke through. It looks like it will be a few more weeks before flowers start to really bloom.

The road heading into the Whiskey Dick area looked very rough from the turnoff of the Vantage Highway and there were already two other cars parked right off the road, so we parked just off the Highway and walked the whole way. If you can make it through the first 100 yards you can make it a fair ways in, but I wasn’t going to risk it in a non 4x4 car. It was a little confusing to make sure we followed the trail at first as it Y’s twice, it is important to remember to stay right and you will be fine. Get ready to watch the ground for animal droppings though, because they are everywhere!! All kinds of tracks on the trail, but we were disappointed to see nothing more then a few birds the whole time. Whiskey Dick was a different trail as we are used to hiking a trail through forests, but this one was truly an old road where two people can actually walk next to each other the whole time.

It would have been nice to drive into the trailhead as it took us about an hour to make it to where we could have parked. As a result we made it to the bottom of Rocky Coulee at 2pm, had lunch and decided to turn around. The views were great looking out towards the Columbia River Gorge. We were very surprised to not see other people the whole day. Made it back to the car about 4pm and hit the bar in Kittitas before our drive back to Seattle!